Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 3

by Jim Baen's Universe! staff

  "They try to force us from the Station," the leader of the Church of the Crown ranted. The crowd who had gathered to malcontent nodded and muttered. "They work to keep us from the light. You know what they do when they find one of the Faithful."

  The crowd faithfully agreed. Lana spotted Warsaw. He backed into a corridor, beckoning. "Did you find him?"

  "In a way," Lana said. "Somebody else nabbed him from right under my nose, but he ditched her. I don't think he'll trust me after that."

  "Tell me what you want with him," he said.

  "They shall not keep us from the Mother," the High Priestess of the Sisterhood called out. "This outrage oppresses we who see the truth of the Star Mother, by those who want power over Her for profit."

  "She changes everything She touches," the Sisters chanted. "Our Mother shall be free!"

  "Tell me what you want with him." He knows where Sergei is. He knows.

  "My son Sergei was kidnapped when he was two. Because of me, and what I used to be. I've always wanted him back."

  The Steward of the Crown had caught the spirit. "They arrest us, they fine us, they force us to see their psychiatrists for mental illness! Do you believe that mechanical failure, Brothers and Sisters, keeps the sight of the Crown of Creation from us?"

  "No!" the chorus replied.

  "And if he's not?" Warsaw said. "If you scrape him and test him and he's not a match?"

  Lana bit her lips and looked down at the soft impact floor.

  Darkness shaded his eyes. "You'd leave him behind."

  "They are trying to still Her voice. But we hear you, Great Mother! No shield will gag your message. No corporation will oppress our faith. We will join hands, we will stand in place! And together we will say, Brothers and Sisters—" a cheer from the crowd as the Priestess grasped the hand of the Patriarch of the Crown, and held their clasped hands high for all to see, "—that we will not be moved!"

  "Please! Warsaw, I have to find him. If he's my son—"

  "And if he's not?" He twisted away. Lana grabbed for him, but only got a handful of elbow before he yanked himself away and ducked into the chanting crowd.

  * * *

  KidTown hadn't been carved out for space because most places weren't even a meter and a half high. Lana was over two, and she walked bent in the dark with a tiny light and her handheld, following the tracer she'd snagged on Warsaw's shirt.

  The treacherous curves, sudden slides and backbreaking inclines would have been easier with no gravity, but at least his beacon was still. Lana could take her time stooping around unless he started moving.

  Since I have all this time, I should be able to concoct an explanation for him. Starting with why I followed him and working my way up to In Spite Of All This, I'm Trustworthy. Give Me the Boy. She rubbed her screaming back and kept going.

  The corridor wouldn't branch toward him, though. So forward, always forward, crawling when the shaft curved upward, and then Lana found two things.

  A shaft going in the right direction, going down. And in the dust, a handprint where a boy might brace himself for the slide. She slid down and around to an alcove.

  The tracer sat in the corner, still attached to a scrap of Warsaw's sleeve. There was no other sign of him.

  * * *

  Lana could retrace her steps by reviewing her journey on POV camera. She could navigate up the steep inclines by bracing her way up the sides of the ducts. Now she had to move, or she would just lie here forever, in the dark.

  Just one more minute.

  "No," Lana muttered to herself. "Get up."

  She clicked on her light, and it flashed in a pale, squinting face.

  "Warsaw. You came back."

  "Why'd you tag me?" he asked.

  "Because I had to find you." Lana flopped back in relief, coughed on dust. "You're the only one who knows how to find Sergei."

  "Or who you think is Sergei. What if he isn't?"

  "It doesn't matter if he isn't," Lana said.

  "Why?"

  "Because while I was lying here—why'd you do that, by the way?"

  "Tell your end first."

  "I thought about what you asked me. I was afraid of even thinking that Sergei wasn't really Sergei. And then I realized that it didn't matter. He needs someone to care about him no matter who he is."

  He sat down in the alcove. "I was supposed to ask you for five hundred in credit."

  "Finder's fee," Lana waved one hand and let it fall back in the dust.

  "And he'd let me keep forty percent after he ditched you."

  "Why that little punk."

  "That's Tommy. But he's not your son. He can't be. He was born right here on Kether. He has both his parents, and they're always so busy working that they don't even notice him. So he steals."

  Lana propped herself on one elbow, inspecting the kid's face, his eyes. "You're sure."

  "He's just a kid," Warsaw said. "He's not thinking about how it would hurt. He's just thinking of what-all he could buy with three hundred credits."

  "Why are you telling me this?" Lana sat up, scrambled to all fours, stretched her spine, and kept her face turned away. I'm not going to cry in front of a kid. I'm not.

  "Because of the tag," he said. "You could have sent Sec after me, or Mafia, or Maintenance—they're always busting up our places—but you came down by yourself."

  Lana glanced at the boy, his head carefully turned away. "Warsaw?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You wanna get off the station?"

  "Yes," he said. "I'll work. You can drop me off anywhere, as long as it's a planet. And I'll pay you back for the passage, I will I swear."

  "Forget it. We'll work something out. You don't want to be a spacer?"

  "Sorry." he shrugged, smiled, and got to his feet. "I want to see a planet. Are they really that colour of blue?"

  "They really are. What's your name? Warsaw just doesn't ring."

  "Michael," he said.

  "Michael. We've got to get off the station. You got anything here you wanna keep?"

  "No," he said. "I want to leave it all behind."

  Lana's breath caught. "Me, too."

  * * *

  Michael changed his route upward when he and Lana heard the screams.

  "What is that?"

  Lana blinked a clock into her view. "It was looking ugly back there a few hours ago. I think maybe Maintenance didn't open the windows for another viewing."

  Michael took Lana's hand. "How long ago?"

  "About half an hour. Do you know where we can have a look?"

  He led Lana to a view of the Kether Nebula Riot through a circulation shaft, high above the enraged serpent of people in the sector hallway. They watched through spinning blades and the persistence of vision as the people who had overcrowded Kether in the name of peace and spirituality smashed kiosks and attacked Valkyries, when denied the sight of their idol.

  A squad of Crazy Bitches moved in a tight square, their riot shields locked together as they fought through the crowd. They held the mob back with T-shocks—get in their beams and anyone foolish enough to try charging the square was fighting the release of their bodily functions while they retched their dizzy heads off.

  The Valkyries were edging their way to where a woman had shinnied up between two beams, holding onto an electrics pipe. Rioters tried to grab her, but she timed her shots well; she kicked a Monk of the Crown right in the face. She waved a flashing card at the Valkyries and howled.

  A Station Identity card, set on "panic." The Valkyries made it, and she dropped into the square. They fought their way out of the sector, laying shit whammies on anybody who got too close.

  And then a woman burst out of the crowd, waving her arms.

  "Maddy!" Lana yelled.

  She'd lost a shoe. She ran at the Valkyries, fumbling inside her jacket.

  Lana smashed at the safety grate covering the fan blades, bashing it like a gong. "Maddy! Don't run! Don't run!"

  The Crazy Bitches took notice of
her, and sighted. Three T-shocks hit her at once.

  She fell, and her hotel guest card flashed its SOS signal and disappeared as the mob closed over her.

  Bright hair sailed in the air, trailing red.

  Michael hauled Lana back. Lana tried to lunge for the view again, to watch in case Madeline got up, to hope, to scream unheard, but he kicked her in the back of the knee and dragged her down the shaft when she stumbled. The pressure walls descended in tune with the outraged screams of the people below.

  The portcullis closed over the airshaft. Lana's light was behind it.

  "Where?" Michael shouted in the warm dark.

  "Maddy's down there," Lana said.

  "They locked down the sectors, it's over," Michael said. "We have to get to your ship. Where is it?"

  "I parked in front of Kether."

  * * *

  Michael didn't need to consult anything but his own head to know where Kether was. He grew up correcting for rotation. He tugged her along a shaft and made her run, detouring where red-painted steel portcullises blocked his desired route.

  "What's happening? Why haven't they opened the sectors?" he asked, altering his course through the shafts. They were crawling now, through a vent Lana wouldn't usually dare in a gravity situation.

  "Kid . . ." Lana rotated her neck, listening to it crack. "They're evacuating the station."

  Micahel halted, lifted his butt, stared at her from between his knees. "Because of a riot?"

  "I don't think so," Lana said. "We've got to find our way out to the docking level."

  "How are they going to evacuate everyone?" Michael asked.

  "They're not," Lana explained. "The Faithful are screwed. There's too many of them, and not enough lifeboats."

  "But they'll die—"

  "Admin and Engineers first, kid. It has to be that way." But why? Recycling exhaustion, subtle radiation, toxic introduction—could have been anything that they could have either figured out or solved quietly. Then here I come, batting my eyelashes with a handful of dead tetramorphs. "Hi. You know that secret you've been keeping? Oops."

  They found an escape through a deserted staff residence, holding hands as they jogged past open doors, empty spaces, and belongings left behind. They snuck into a suit locker. There was a pretty good selection of kids' suits, and Lana got Michael into one, glossing over the long lecture about how to check seals for integrity. But the locker where she'd left her suit—the door, smashed open. Her suit, gone.

  They scrambled into every locker. They went to EVA Maintenance—gone. Gone. Gone. The Copenhagen Star was seven hundred meters away, parked in the lot, one hundred thirty-five degrees from Lana's facing. From the EVA lock, it was five hundred meters.

  It might as well have been in Texas.

  Lana kicked a locker. The sound was good; satisfying. She kicked it again, and then bashed her fists into it.

  "What do we do?" Michael asked.

  I can't crack up in front of a kid. "We're fucked. If I had a suit and you didn't, we'd be on the Star by now."

  "How?"

  "I'd strap you to me and make a run for it. The Star's close—you'd be out in vacuum about thirty seconds. Then we lay you up in bed for a bit, and no problem."

  "Why can't I do that?"

  "No suit time. If you'd had even ten hours—"

  "Is there a chance you'll find a suit?"

  "Nope."

  Michael turned to retrieve a set of gaspaks. "Then it's the only way."

  "Kid, you can't."

  "I have to," he shouted. "Teach me."

  * * *

  Michael arched and twisted through a half dozen EVA manoeuvres as Lana instructed. When he got them letter perfect, they ran back against the station's rotation to an airlock near the Star.

  "I can do it," Michael said. "I learn fast. Didn't I tell you I learn fast?"

  "Knowing that you'll die if you don't learn something concentrates the mind wonderfully. The lock on the Star is open. What's next?"

  "I check the seals on my suit. I check the tethers holding us together. I check the heading for the Star. I cycle the lock, but I keep my eyes on the heading. I don't try to look for the ship, and I dive. I correct, based on the heading, and then I look for the ship."

  "And how fast are you going?"

  "Three times faster than I think I am," he responded. "Reverse when the door appears about a meter wide. Don't go for graceful, just get us in—and for God's sake shut the door."

  "Okay, you got it," Lana said. Heavy boots pounded along the metal deck, and the echo of another voice spoke loudly from a distance.

  Lana puzzled, but Michael turned on the communications.

  "—Repeat: you are safe. Remain calm. All systems are automated; credit features on all vended services are disabled. You have food, pressure, water and air. Accommodations are freely available. Rescue vessels are on their way to collect you. Repeat—"

  "Do you believe that?" Michael asked.

  "No," Lana said.

  "I don't think they do, either. I guess the sectors are open now . . ."

  "And now they're checking to make sure all the ships really are gone," Lana said.

  Michael stared at her for a long moment, and then hit the intention lock. Lana reached for the tethers on his rescue harness—

  "Whoops."

  "Yeah, I didn't think of that, either," Lana said.

  "How do we . . ."

  "Like this." Lana crouched and wound the rescue webbing around her body, and then stood up, holding Michael on her hip like a lanky baby. "I'll dive. Helmet seals?"

  He closed them, turned his suit on, and gave Lana the thumbs up. Lana smacked the override and opened the lock into space, its merciless vacuum devouring her screams.

  * * *

  Lana's ears popped as they tumbled, unbalanced by the difference in size. Michael stopped the tumble, and Lana twisted with him, like a dancer sensing how her partner is going to move. He didn't stop, the way a greenie would. He got into the ballpark and adjusted on the way. Lana's flesh froze. her tongue forced her mouth open, and that would have choked her if she'd had any air. Her chest convulsed, trying to get the air that didn't exist.

  Then Michael put his arms out in front of him, throwing on the brakes. Too soon! Lana knew it from the tension through the body she clung to—he'd figured that the velocity meant they would crash, and Michael was going to kill Lana to keep her from a broken ankle. Lana's eyes streamed with the burst casing around her POV cameras, leaking from her eyelids like egg yolks.

  And then it was up to him because her ten seconds were up. She wouldn't feel the rest.

  * * *

  Lana couldn't see. Couldn't hear. Her collarbone was broken; her left leg screamed in silver shrieks in time with her pulse. But she could breathe, and she wrapped one good arm around Michael as his body shook with sobs in the warming-but-full-of-blessed-air Copenhagen Star.

  They floated that way for a long time before Lana realized that she could see out of one POV camera. It felt gritty without the casing.

  Michael towed Lana up to the bridge. He found something to splint her leg, tied her bad arm to her body, and cussed right back at Lana when she berated him for hurting her. She knew from the way his lips moved.

  Just before they left that place she lightened the screens, and they watched Kether dance as they got farther and farther away, until Lana was bigger than it was.

  It didn't take long, this time.

  From the Badlands

  Written by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

  Illustrated by John Ward

  "Whoa, Porky."

  The riding pig pulled up on the ridge and twisted his left ear back toward Sam. Sam scratched his two-day-old growth of beard and looked back at the dry, dusty ground behind him. He paid no attention to the standing stones or the occasional spine plant. He was looking for dust clouds that indicated a posse was after him.

  Porky oinked inquiringly. He was about five feet at the shoulders an
d weighed just over a thousand pounds, a well-bred and well-mannered riding pig. Which was honestly more than could be said for his present rider, at least when it came to the well-mannered part.

  "Looks like we lost 'em."

  Porky snorted and Sam patted his neck. He looked around again, wondering where the heck he'd ended up. Porky had scrambled up a rock fall. They were about twenty feet above the desert, on one end of a little valley that had been hidden by the rocks. The fall looked fresh and Porky was following a twisty cut through it. He was nosing west, acting the way thirsty pigs did when they smelled water. That reminded Sam how thirsty he was himself. "Okay, Porky. We'll follow your nose for a while."